JOURNAL

ENTER THE PIPE MAZE

Towards the middle of the book, Brian enters a maze of pipes... here's some background on the making of the illustration.

The original thumbnail from around 2 years ago. The basic concept was a tiny Brian among towering pipes, underwater chimneys, columns of bubbles, and a sense of gushing from inside of them.

I had the idea of creating it in the computer because of all the cool architectural elements that came with it.

This is the CG model of the smokestacks and the structure of the final composition. Now looking back at it, I sort of want to see it animated...

It might look complicated but actually the CG model is composed of basic shapes that are relatively easy to model. The very large smokestack was created by modeling a single slice of scallop and then duplicating it around a center Y axis about thirty times. Easy! A little fun animation fact: a black and white render like this one is called an 'ambient occlusion' pass. Its purpose is to create the impression of shadows without actually casting any. It is very effective for capturing shadow detail in nooks and crannies, and when used in conjunction with a compositing program it can be used to hone and sweeten shadow detail.

Ok back to drawing...

Now that I had a template, the next step was to... draw. I went back in pencil, added a few things. Next, the drawing was scanned in, a base coat of colors was digitally applied, then the image was printed out, mounted on board, and prepped for a coat of actual paint.

The painting then got scanned into the computer for a few final touches and joins the rest of the finished illustrations from the book. Here's it up on screen.